ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to investigate the changing pattern and processes of urbanization in one of the most rapidly growing peri-urban regions in southern China experiencing export-led industrialization and widespread urbanization. Most of the existing documentations of Chinese urbanization adopt a top-down approach and focus on some officially designated cities especially large cities. This study adopts a different yet complimentary bottom-up approach to analyzing the dramatic transformation of urban activities and settlements outside large cities with a magnitude no less spectacular than that within the large cities. The objective is to identify the new urban forms evolving in southern China in the recent decade, analyze the processes that have given rise to these urban forms and evaluate the thesis of Chinese urbanization in the light of the rapidly changing real world situation. The hypothesis made and tested in this study is that, despite the growing convergence in urban forms under the Chinese and American contexts, Chinese urbanization as locally constituted processes remains significantly distinct from what has been observed in the West. Moreover, urbanization in contemporary China differs significantly from what was described in the past so that the conventional emphasis on uniqueness is no longer adequate to enlighten the complex and hybrid nature of Chinese urbanism in a globalizing context. A new and innovative approach with local sensitivity and historical contingency is in order for a better understanding of urbanization within the different regional contexts of the globalizing world.
